I’m going to try to make the most out of my Disney+ and Prime Video subscriptions and watch random movies that I’ve never heard of, but based on the description and/or imagery, I’ll give it a go. Ironically, I tend to rewatch films and TV shows I’ve already seen.
At this point in my life, an hour out of my day is a lot to spend. I’m not willing to waste one let alone two or three hours, which nowadays almost feels like the entire day, on a film I’m not certain about. So what I’m doing is, I’ll give a random show 20 to 30 minutes and if it’s not good, I’ll give myself permission to stop watching.
One of the movies that caught my eye just based on the hero image, the cast, and the short description was a movie called Here Today which is available on Prime Video. Here Today stars Tiffany Haddish in a movie written and directed by the great comic, Billy Crystal.
Movies like Here Today won’t have big action sequences or even clever plots. They’re usually low to modestly budgeted movies that will rely heavily on blowing out the drama on everyday slice of life. In Here Today, a movie that is a bit self-indulgent in terms of it obviously being modelled after Crystal’s own life. Crystal stars as an aging comedy writer named Charlie who is experiencing the beginnings of dementia. Not only is he struggling to adapt to a new way of working in comedy (they use computers now and not typewriters) while trying to navigate his own day to day life. Charlie has to try to make it on his own as a family tragedy years earlier in which his wife died in a car accident led to the son and daughter and their families being estranged from Charlie.
So that’s the melodrama that’s been given a VIP treatment here. The kids hate Charlie because they blame him for their mother’s untimely death. Charlie and his wife, Carrie, argue on a sidewalk in Manhattan as Charlie promised to be home on time, but he has to keep working on a script for his Broadway show. Carrie of course drives home alone and doesn’t make it.
The rest of the movie is just as lukewarm and not quite movie material. What really makes the movie work is Billy Crystal and Tiffany Haddish. Despite the ludicrous way in which Haddish’s character Emma meets Charlie, the film just kind of skirts on by in being an okay film. Emma befriends Charlie and even moves in with him to try to help him complete his book which is dedicated to his late wife. It’s not exactly a May-December romance but it eventually leads there. Strangely enough, I actually thought it worked and wasn’t creepy or weird at all. Haddish even sings in the movie and she is convincing as an underground lounge singer.
Thanks to Crystal’s Hollywood pull, some big names make random cameos in the film including Sharon Stone and Kevin Kline. All of these great cameos are totally self-serving and don’t mean much in the context of the film. You know they’re all only there because they’re good pals with Billy Crystal.
I think the movie may have been stronger if it didn’t fall into an unexpected romantic comedy. It may have worked better if Charlie’s ended up being a mentor to Emma. We could have seen more of the dynamics between the two characters in terms of their personalities and motivations in life. We can also see more of Charlie’s amazing talent which brought him so much success in life and which he’s trying so hard to hold onto. We could have seen him try to mentor and grow the talent of Emma versus the typical the young and whacky character enters the life of the old guy and changes his world.
The film doesn’t really get too serious about Charlie’s dementia. One of the very few great scenes in the film was when Charlie is walking down a sidewalk, but he is stopped from going further due to construction. The way Charlie breaks down because he doesn’t know how to get home any other way, you could feel his fear and his embarrassment all at the same time. We can only imagine how other day to day things will eventually become impossible for Charlie if there are unexpected small changes in routine.
Of course there’s a sudden crisis in which Charlie and his granddaughter go missing and that’s how his kids and Emma all come together and unite. I told you, this movie is filled with cliché after cliché.
If you have a couple of hours to spare and it’s a slow day, this movie is okay to watch. Billy Crystal and Tiffany Haddish really do their best with terrible material and I hope the two will star together in a real comedy picture soon.
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